Gratitude for the Stars
by AsianScaper
Summary: J/C cake for everyone. A moment of tenderness two hours after their shift. *grin*


**Title:** _Gratitude for the Stars_   
**Author:** AsianScaper   
**Disclaimer:** Star Trek: Voyager and its characters belong to Paramount. Fortunately, the story belongs to me.   
**Rating:** G   
**Category:** Romance   
**Feedback:** Friends, enemies: Send your comments or constructive criticism to asianscaper@edsamail.com.ph   
**Summary:** J/C cake for everyone. A moment of tenderness two hours after their shift.   
**Spoilers:** None   
**Archiving:** Anywhere, just tell me where it's at please.   
**Dedication:** To all the J/C shippers and to Voyager's cast and crew. Thank you for all the wonderful work you've put into this awesome show.   
**Author's Note:** At last...inspiration came to visit! 

__________________ 

We are but men who count the geometry of the stars and contemplate the spaces between with the lantern of our encompassing intellect. We cross such boundaries with arks built from the strength of our bonds and unite their parts with the moving potency of our humanity, of our unique species and form. 

Lights, then, were distant delights meant only for the eyes to devour yet now, they were emblems sown upon our mantles, an atlas in every stretch of the navigator's needle. So what more was left to us than the darkness between the brilliance, which greeted us in hapless smiles? They consumed our pride and seduced the inner sanctums of our curiosity; we sail with patched cloth of uniformed fibers as our canvas and long, tilted oars of effulgence known to stars, as the souls of our vessels. Man's quest for perfection atrophied in a divine journey of ideals and we were fettered to laws such as those of physics and better yet, morality. 

These tight starships were the daughters of technology, of a culture below that of intellect and aligned to will. Below intellect for it would never reach the mind's inordinate pace and aligned to will for it was born from images constructed behind an inventor's eyeless stage. Technology was a discipline measured by the way a species excelled in it or at times, simply otherwise. It became the gauge for a species' worth. 

Often, too, it became Kathryn Janeway's scale and she fought her vexed expression with the power of her will. She succeeded, of course, but that brought the all too weary universe into the kaleidoscope of uncertainty. 

_Orion's belt…the Big Dipper…Well, hello Venus. You look particularly bright tonight._

Her finger felt the smooth surface of her PADD, fiddling unconsciously with a number of controls that brought about its tiny view-screen star charts familiar to her eyes yet ultimately unascertained by cosmos here, in this forlorn slice of the universe's immense pie, the Delta Quadrant. 

Her revelation gave birth to a tiny sigh of what created the worrisome set of her eyes, the passing lines above her smooth forehead. 

Throwing the PADD unto the solidity of her desk and knowing that such a malicious act would do no damage to the device, she stood from her place and in contemplation of her mood, decided that a cup of coffee was in order. All that, before her door chirped to whisper the presence of one, who never failed to come when sorrow called. 

"Captain? I have the reports you requested from Engineering. Can I come in?" 

Janeway bit her lip, crossed over to her replicator and keyed in a command for black, unadulterated coffee. She threw in another couple of seconds for good measure before finally considering the agitated movements on the other side of her stolidly gray door. Fingering the handle of her mug, she leisurely sat by her desk and sipped in pleasure amidst the fog of heat emerging from molecules of gloom. 

"You may enter, Commander." 

The doors slid aside in accordance to the sturdy bulk of a tall man whose face was drawn into a steady smile of constant satisfaction, all alleviated by the power of a symbol delineated into the contours of his forehead. He crossed the cold space between, his dark eyes speaking to the pictures planted into the soil of her homely quarter, his lips bending to even higher degrees as he smelled the air and saw colors of auburn beneath. It reminded him quietly of joyance beyond that of sunrise and its exit upon the clouds. 

Sitting with a casualty he never seemed to lose, only hide, he said, "Thank you, Captain. I thought you'd never answer." 

His voice created furrows upon the lute's surface of music and tender as the sound was, it grinned with the susurration of a dying waterfall as it fell into the wonders of snow. It tasted the granaries of wisdom's harvest and planted even bigger fields. The utterance left his lips in a flurry, like the eagle in its quest for home's cozy nest and Janeway had little time to catch the golden notes that flew from that extrinsic tongue of fondness and favor. 

"So did I," she told him, gesturing for him to take a seat while she cleared the PADD's on her desk with more than a frown and an impatient tap of her foot. "Just leave those PADD's and we can both get some sleep. It's two hours past the start of the Beta shift." 

Her First Officer's hands deposited the gadgets before her yet lingered for a moment on her desk, their five tools harking to staccatos beneath. The sound was gentle, small trills from Orpheus' ancient harp to melt the monster's eyes and divert it into Sleep's mindless river. 

"I don't see any night clothes anywhere," he told her solemnly. 

Janeway glared at him pointedly. "Neither do I." 

"Well then. Since we can't seem to stop working well beyond the night shift, you might as well give me a sip of your coffee." 

She laughed; it was deep and heartfelt, the strange twang of an arrow leaving Cupid's bow. "Green tea, Chakotay, never coffee. You're not going to surrender to this wonderful addiction. I have, and too much becomes too little." 

The words rolled off a nuance's marked way and entered the flight of his smile. He, in knowledge of graver things, chose to leave such designations to the absorbing qualities of sleep's depravity. But effort to do such only caused the sides of his mouth into the charmed indentation of heightened bliss. 

"A drink wouldn't hurt," he said, walking over to the replicator in that stride of confidence known to paths of authority and rebirth. "Computer, warm green tea, seventy five degrees centigrade." 

The tiny cup appeared within gasps of blue energy. "The wonders of replicator rations can certainly buy time," Janeway mused. "You wanted to talk to me about something?" 

"Yes, I do." He took a careful sip, his hands cradling the cup like an infant. Infancy truly had that gift of dependence on those benevolent to give enough of life's constant beat. Janeway envied the attentive shift of his fingers, so unlike hers as she wrestled with those of her cup. 

Was she so entranced by her duty to swim in waters of protocol and never see daylight as she drowned in it? 

These little things of movement, of hues created by the variations light commuted into a dance, of immutable drums from breathing, of emotions too bent from drinking in love's cup to be seen, were things she frowned to look at. But the little things were what truly mattered and she submerged herself in immobility at the thought, which she knew would turn to nothingness once more when this compassionate man left. 

"I'm listening, Chakotay." 

He stepped into her circle of isolation, breaking barriers as he went. Fear unraveled its claws to draw symbols upon her mind, to author laws of reason and in his stride of courage, broke bread with everything but her struggling quintessence. So fear fled and left her with him staring down at her with the eyes of one, who had surrendered his innocence to her cause. 

"I know you'll listen, Kathryn. You always do," he whispered, lifting his hand and tenderly as he did so, brushed her jaw with the linear motion of concern. Quickly, those silent deliberations fell into the lake of decay and flew aside. A sparkle of anxiety for her state did not burn to flames of hearths for he placed her above all else, as once he accepted and still did. The warrior had not left him and wishes were left unsaid for there were none unexpressed when dreams lay before him in a form that moved with distress to conduct and protocol. Saddened as he was by this, he did not concede to selfishness and left her to his heart and to her devices of pure responsibility. 

She smiled for him, in attempts to offer flowers when she had none, to offer laughter when it was already stored within the vial of his lips. Clearing her throat, she asked rather blandly, "Anything else, Commander?" 

"No, Captain. Thank you." 

"All part of the service," she managed through raised brows. 

He chuckled softly, moving to the door, his cup of tea unfinished and mainly untouched. "Are you all right?" 

"Why shouldn't I be?" 

"Good question. 'Why shouldn't you be?'" He studied her with eyes that provided deluges of prudence as he exited. "You should ask yourself that more often, Captain. Good night." 

When the doors finally closed behind him, she shook her head, as if exorcising the ghosts of his presence but then, there was one question, after those gestures of tenderness she had not bothered to deny. The query never escaped her though, tethered as it was to her heart. And oh, why had she never bothered to answer it? 

_Are you all right?_

In a whisper that spoke of defeat, of submission, yet knowledge of her own obstinate mindset, she said to no one in particular, "Why shouldn't I be?" 

It was a mirror of Chakotay's deliberate chortle of wisdom when she greeted the empty seat before her with a smile. "Good night, Chakotay," she told the void quietly. "Sweet dreams to you, for I…I may dream your dreams and we'll both die knowing that they've been played like a man's time before a stage." 

She sprouted thoughts to the lea of unending streams, tides of flowing light outside her windows. 

_Stars, you need not watch me tonight. I have my own…and he shines the brightest._

____________________ 

**-The End-**


End file.
